This invention is directed to an apparatus for conveying cookies in rows with the design sides of the cookies facing up and orienting the cookies as discharged for sandwiching with the bottom of the sandwiched cookies facing design sides down and the top cookies, design side up, and more particularly to an automatic apparatus in which cookies are fed from an oven design side up and stacked one behind the other, conveyed to transfer chutes in which they are stacked in vertical magazines one on top of the other. The magazines have aligned delivery ends, spaced one in advance of the other, with the advance or downstream cookies being the top cookies of the sandwich and the upstream cookies being the bottom cookies of the sandwich with the design of the bottom cookies facing down and the plain sides of each cookie facing toward each other for forming a cookie sandwich with creme supplied to the plain side of the bottom cookie and the plain side of the top cookie deposited thereon as conveying means carries the sandwiched cookie through pressure means pressing the cookies together and then to the discharge end of the apparatus in which the sandwiches are turned upright and counted and loaded in a tray loader such as that shown and described in the Talbot U.S. Pat. No. 3,290,859, dated Dec. 13, 1966 and the Rose et al application Ser. No. 035,687, filed May 3, 1979, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,226,073 dated Oct. 7, 1980. Said patent and application are incorporated herein as a part hereof.
In prior sandwiching machines and tray loaders, the cookies are taken through an oven by a conveyor which may be a belt conveyor in rows with the design sides up and were formerly stacked in leading and trailing magazines by hand with the design sides of the cookies in the leading magazine, which will be the top cookies of the sandwich up and the cookies in the trailing or upstream magazines, which will be the bottom cookies of the sandwich, with the design sides down. Creme is placed on the plain sides of the bottom cookies and the top cookies are deposited onto the creme on the bottom cookies as in the Fay U.S. Pat. No. 3,119,352 incorporated herein as a part hereof. The sandwiched cookies are then conveyed through pressure means pressing the cookies together to form a sandwich with the design sides of the cookies on the outside. The sandwiched cookies are then delivered to a tray loader, such as shown in the Talbot U.S. Pat. No. 3,290,859 which counts the cookies and then takes the counted cookies and loads the counted cookies into trays or cartons.
The prior art sandwiching machines manufactured by the assignee of the present invention have been very successful, but are not entirely automatic, since the magazines retaining the stacks of advance and trailing cookies must be loaded manually as supplied from the oven. This requires care in loading the leading and trailing magazines in order to assure that the cookies are stacked properly so the design sides of the sandwiched cookies will be on the outside and the plain sides will face each other with creme therebetween, and even then, a cookie will be improperly placed in its magazine so the design side of one cookie will face inside and the design of the other cookie will face outside.
Accordingly, a sandwich apparatus which can convey and stack the cookies as delivered from the oven with no manual attention and assure that the design sides of the top and bottom cookies face on the outside and the plain sides face each other without manual attention is a distinct advance in the art.